World Of Warcraft System Requirements Have Changed A Lot In 10 Years

We're coming up on the 10th anniversary of the 2004 release of World of Warcraft, and Blizzard has just released the system requirements for November's Warlords of Draenor expansion pack. Let's compare!

In the table below I compare the minimum system requirements for the original release of World of Warcraft to the minimum's posted last night by Blizzard. What's fascinating to me is how many terms in the left column I've spent years trying to forget. Remember Windows ME? I didn't, until now. Thanks.

Original WoW (December 2004)

Warlords Of Draenor (November 2014)

Operating System

Windows 98/ME/2000/XP

Windows XP/Windows Vista/Windows 7/Windows 8 (latest Service Pack)

Processor

800 MHz or higher CPU

Intel Core2 Duo E6600 or AMD Phenom X3 8750

Video Card

32 MB 3D graphics card with hardware transform and lighting, such as GeForce 2 or better

NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT, ATI Radeon HD 4850 or Intel HD Graphics 3000

Hard Drive Space

4 GB or more of available hard drive space

35 GB available HD space

RAM

256 MB or more of RAM

2 GB RAM

Mac OS

MacOS X 10.3.5 or newer

OS X 10.8

Mac Processor

933 MHz or higher G4 or G5 processor

Intel Core 2 Duo

Mac Video Card

ATI or NVIDIA video hardware with 32 MB VRAM or more

NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT or ATI Radeon HD 4850

Internet Connection

56k or higher modem with an Internet connection

Broadband Internet connection

Of course no one wants to face a new expansion pack at minimum specs, so here are the recommended specs for Warlords of Draenor, which would prove a real challenge to anyone trapped ten years in the past.

Recommended Specifications

PC/Mac:

4 GB RAM

Multi-button mouse with scroll wheel

PC:

Windows 7/Windows 8 64-bit (latest Service Pack)

Intel Core i5 2400 or AMD FX-4100 or better

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470, ATI Radeon HD 5870 or better

Mac:

OS X 10.9 (or latest version)

Intel Core i5 or better

NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M or ATI Radeon HD 6750M or better

Is your system ready? Oh god, I hope your system is ready.

Comments

Its also important to remember how WoW is played has changed a lot since the original version. Players now regularly engage in raids, PVP and other high density things. In the original, raids were a luxury, there was no formal PVP, and a lot of people struggled when they were around tons of players in cities (but it mattered less since you didn't do much).

Heh this is true. I remember how we used to see over a hundred people gathering just north of a town in the north on the human aisle, in a green field (you could sail a boat to the town? I cant remember, its been nealy 10 years!) People would all gather on this field, two sides, and everyone would wait, seriously. The message would go out about a giant battle and then people would engage. The lag was HORRENDOUS but it was still kickass! The battle went on for around 10 minutes or so, but in the end, only one person would end up victorious.

Man, I remember not knowing about that Scourge invasion right before Wrath... I had the absolute shit scared out of me because I hadn't actually known about the first one, thus the first time I saw a Scourge I was confused. It then proceeded to infect another player at which point my jaw dropped and I ran the hell out of there. Good times.

Hah, I know. When I got WoW in 2004 I ONLY had a 56k modem and was flatting. Trying to juggle that connection for phone calls and using the net was a struggle till we got adsl a few months later. Its funny looking at that Network icon in the bottom right of my screen next to the clock, something I quite often take for granted.

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